BUNDLE: Mastering Mud and Grey Tess on Bright Mortar with Kelley Knickerbocker
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Enjoy two of Kelley's most popular courses as a Bundle! With our Bundle options, you will automatically receive 15% off both courses when purchased together!
NOTE: ONCE YOU HAVE PURCHASED YOUR BUNDLE TO ACCESS YOUR COURSES YOU WILL LOG INTO MOSAIC ARTS ONLINE, CLICK ON THE TOP RIGHT OF THE SCREEN ON "MY PRODUCTS" AND YOU WILL FIND EACH COURSE LISTED SEPARATELY! ENJOY YOUR COURSES!
Description of "Mastering Mud":
Curious about or frustrated with mortar* as a mosaic adhesive? Then you’re in the right place. Mosaic Arts Online presents Kelley Knickerbocker and her latest course "Mastering Mud." Kelley has been setting every imaginable type of tessera directly into mortar to create mosaic for nearly two decades, and in this online course she walks you through her favorite mortar-wrangling techniques for super strong bonding, clean working (yes, it can be done!), and a great finished look. In addition, you’ll discover that setting into mortar eliminates the need for grout in most instances and makes working with wildly varied heights of materials a breeze.
Step by step, from scratch coat to finishing coat, Kelley guides you through the correct consistency for different applications of mortar, mixing with water vs a polymer admix, tinting with dry or wet tints, maneuvering the stuff around on the substrate, and three different methods of setting tesserae into place (mortar bed, backbuttering, and the baggie method). Along the way, of course, she demystifies all kinds of terms like slaking, pot life, load rate, and read-through.
Along with all the technical and structural information about mortar, Kelley hopes to plant the notion in your creative psyche that mortar can be as vital a visual design element as your tesserae and your substrate (what?!). By showing a wealth of images, and building a mostly-mortar mosaic from start to finish, you’ll come away with a new appreciation – and new inspiration - of how mortar can be a gorgeous, strong addition to your mosaic designs.
*The terms thinset, cement mortar, mortar, and tile adhesive will be defined and then used interchangeably in this course
Description of "Grey Tess on Bright Mortar":
Are you ready to level up both of your andamento and color games? If so, this course by Kelley Knickerbocker contains multitudes: a grayscale material gradient, a vividly colorful mortar gradient, and the basic principles of andamento are all unpacked in this technique-rich offering by one of our most prolific and innovative instructors.
If you've been wanting to know the basics of successful andamento (directionality, keystoning, splitting a line, etc.), this course opens with a crash course in just that, then moves straight into complementary gradients (dark-to-light grayscale over light-to-dark mortar).
Here are just a few of the things you'll be learning in this course:
- How to apply the basic principles of andamento (the flow of a mosaic line)
- How to organize a grayscale material palette
- How grayscale and constraints enhance color
- How to build metaphorical color (liveliness and character) into a line of grayscale andamento
- How to use wet pigments in mortar
- How to create and manipulate (expand and contract) a rapidly-changing color gradient in mortar
This all may seem like a lot to tackle at once (metaphorical color, what?!), but Kelley's thorough, encouraging, and humorous explanations during step-by-step demonstrations (first in a getting-familiar exercise, then an artwork) ensure that you're never left floundering in the deep end. And you'll emerge with new knowledge and confidence along with two gorgeous samples of the techniques.
Kelley shares her suggested tools, materials, and resources for this course.
Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
Your Instructor
Visual artist Kelley Knickerbocker left a 22-yr administrative career at the University of Washington in 2006 to found a mosaic studio (Rivenworks Mosaics, Seattle) and direct her accumulated skills in project management and planning toward designing/fabricating/installing mosaic artwork for public, commercial, residential and gallery environments.
Kelley’s ruggedly dimensional mosaics, in a broad range of materials, are a textural distillation of her fascination with contrast, material properties and the technical challenges of mosaic construction. Sharing that fascination and learning from other art makers are keys to the freshness of Kelley’s mosaic practice, and she travels extensively throughout North America speaking, collaborating and teaching in-depth workshops on mosaic style and technique.
Kelley’s fine art mosaic panels have been accepted to numerous national and international juried exhibitions, and many reside in private collections. She is an active member of the Society of American Mosaic Artists.
Courses Included with Purchase
